Email Marketing Blog

Newsletter Sign Up

Mobile devices are rapidly gaining on desktop computers for email market share, according to a Contactology analysis of millions of email opens.

We looked at more than 137 million email opens recorded on Contactology servers in the first quarter of 2013. The data shows the continuation — and possibly the acceleration — of a trend we saw at the end of 2012: Opens on mobile devices are gaining on opens with desktop and laptop computers.

In October of 2012, mobile opens accounted for 33 percent of the total. In March 2013, mobile devices were used to open 43 percent of all emails sent through Contactology servers.

"Mobile" continues to increase its email market share.

Among Desktop email clients, Outlook and Apple Mail are the most commonly used, accounting for more than half of all Desktop opens. Among web-based clients, Gmail is the most commonly used.

Apple’s iPhone and iPad continue to dominate recorded email opens with Android devices in third place.

Email opens are recorded when recipients load the images in a message or when a recipient clicks on a link. Because email clients handle images differently by default, some clients are likely under-represented in the opens data.